An ever-green wreath
Many people have helped to build Canada's poetry community over the League's 40-year history - not only poets, but also supporters, publishers, booksellers and teachers. Donations in their memory support the League's work of building the future, but also honour the past.
Recent donations remember:
 George Johnston
(1913 - 2004)
Poet and teacher, George is remembered as "a modest, gentle, wise man who inspired generations of students." He was born in Hamilton, educated at the University of Toronto and served in the RCAF as a reconnaissance pilot in Africa. He returned to the University of Toronto for graduate studies and then taught at Mount Allison University for two years before joining the faculty of Carleton University where he taught until his retirement in 1979. During that time he became recognized internationally as a translator of the Icelandic sagas.
His individual volumes of poems built him an reputation for "unostentatious but formidable artistry" and a loyal audience. His books include The Cruising Auk (1959); Home Free (1966); Happy Enough: Poems 1933-72 (1972); Taking a Grip (1979); Auk Redivivus: Selected Poems (1981); Ask Again (1984). His final collection, What is to Come, Selected and New Poems, appeared in 1996.
George was elected a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets by his fellow members, in recognition of his contributions to poetry and to the League.
Donated by: Mark Johnston
Allocated to: League operating funds, 2004
 David Huggett
(1949 - 2005)
Poet David Huggett was not widely known outside Edmonton during his lifetime. But he served the poetry community in this city well as a volunteer with organizations like the Writers Guild of Alberta and the Stroll of Poets Society.
David was born in Victoria, and made his living for a number of years as a carpenter and fisherman while developing his skills as a writer and painter. He moved to Edmonton in 1992. He died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at a sadly early age.
David published only one collection of poetry during his lifetime. The sequence that makes up most of Gran: the maledictions is a spare, remarkable dialogue between a poet and an unlikely muse - an old, muttering woman encountered on buses and in shabby rooms, whose mouldy green ear becomes, at last, the listening ear of God.
Donated by: Alice Major
Allocated to: League operating funds, 2004
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